Mercedes might look back on the Mexican Grand Prix with regret, after the Germans blew any chance of victory following a poor strategy for both George Russell and Lewis Hamilton.
The Silver Arrows had looked fast all weekend at the Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez, with Russell having topped FP2 and FP3, and with Hamilton topping Q1 and Q2.
After Russell qualified second and Hamilton third, many predicted that the Brackley-based team would finally claim their first win of 2022.
Alas, it once again wasn’t to be, as the Germans ended up going too conservative on their tyre strategy.
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The team fitted both Russell and Hamilton with the Medium tyres for the start of the race, before switching them onto the Hards.
Red Bull, on the other hand, started both Max Verstappen and Sergio Pérez on the Softs, before moving them onto the Mediums for their second and final stint.
It meant that the two Red Bull’s had much better grip off the line, which saw Verstappen maintain his lead and Pérez rise to third.
Russell was the big loser, after dropping from second to fourth, whilst Hamilton made a place.
That was effectively the end of the action for the top four, as the Red Bull duo were able to manage the softer compounds until the end, whereas Mercedes could only match their times.
Hamilton and Russell both complained during their second stint that the strategy wasn’t right, something their race engineers continued to defuse, by insisting that the Red Bull’s would come to them.
In the end, they never did, resulting in Mercedes boss Toto Wolff coming onto the radio to Hamilton to admit that the team “got it wrong”.
Wolff explained further after the race why they opted for the Medium-Hard strategy, and that, ultimately, Red Bull “totally surprised” them.
“We didn’t think the medium would go anywhere near the end,” Wolff told Sky Sports F1.
“We are totally surprised with the way Perez hammered the tyres and it still hung on.
“We just got it wrong. We discussed whether the soft-to-hard was a viable one-stop strategy and soft-to-medium was never on the radar.”
Whilst second and fourth isn’t what they were hoping for, after a strong weekend, they did outscore Ferrari by some margin, in the fight for second in the Constructors’ Championship.
The Ferrari’s could only manage fifth and sixth at the Mexican GP, which saw Mercedes cut the deficit to 40 points, with two races remaining.
The Mercedes boss admitted that claiming second would be “great for all our people”, and added that a “win would be fantastic”.
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“We need to be careful to jump to quick assumptions,” added Wolff.
“They [Ferrari] were clearly not fast this weekend, but it was also on our simulations our best weekend, so let’s see what happens in Brazil.
“Finishing second would be great for all our people and a win would be fantastic, to demonstrate that the car was fast.”